Arlene Avakian

Arlene Avakian arrived at UMass in 1972 as a graduate student working on the social history of American women, but quickly became a key figure in the creation of the university’s new program in Women’s Studies. As she completed her MA in History (1975) and EdD (1985), she helped in the early organization of the program, later joining the faculty as professor and program director. Through her research and teaching, she contributed to an engaging departmental culture in which the intersection of race, class, gender, ethnicity, and sexuality were placed at the center, building the program over the course of 35 years into the nationally-recognized Department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. Avakian has written and taught on topics ranging from the lives and experiences of Armenian American and African American women to culinary history and the construction of whiteness. She retired in May 2011.

Documenting the growth and development of Women’s Studies at UMass Amherst, the collection includes valuable material on the creation of the department (and Women’s Studies more generally), second- and third-wave feminism, and Avakian’s teaching and research. The collection includes a range of correspondence, memoranda, notes, and drafts of articles, along with several dozen oral historical interviews with Armenian American women. Also noteworthy is the extensive documentation of ABODES, the Amherst Based Organization to Develop Equitable Shelter, which established the Pomeroy Lane Cooperative Housing Community in South Amherst in 1994.

With a law degree from Yale in hand in 1968, Peter d’Errico began work as a staff attorney with Dinebeiina Nahiilna Be Agaditahe Navajo Legal Services in Shiprock, Arizona, representing American Indian interests in the US courts. Stemming from his frustrations with a stilted legal system, however, he evolved into an “anti-lawyer,” and in 1970 returned to academia. Joining the faculty at UMass, d’Errico focused his research and writing on the legal issues affecting indigenous peoples and he regularly taught courses on Indian law and the role of the law in imposing state systems on non-state societies. His impact was instrumental in establishing the Department of Legal Studies. Both before and after his retirment in 2002, d’Errico also remained active as a practitioner in Indian law.

The d’Errico collection contains a significant record of d’Errico’s high profile legal work in Indian law, including his work with Western Shoshone land rights and on the case Randall Trapp, et al. v. Commissioner DuBois, et al. In Trapp, a long-running, but ultimately successful First Amendement case, he and Robert Doyle represented prisoners in the Massachusetts Department of Corrections seeking to establish a sweat lodge.

As a member of the faculty in the English Department at UMass Amherst in 1972, Arlyn Diamond became one of the founding members of the Program in Women’s Studies. A scholar of medieval European literature, Diamond received her doctorate from Berkeley in 1970 and became an early proponent of feminist criticism. Among other works, she was author of Authority of Experience: Essays in Feminist Criticism (1988) and editor (with Lee Edwards) of American Voices, American Women (1973). Diamond retired from the University in 2004.

This small collection consists primarily of notes for research and teaching. Of particular interest is a series of women’s studies bibliographies, readings for the Five College Women’s Studies Faculty Seminar (Autumn 1977), graduate level feminist theory courses, and notes related to the history of women’s studies. Also included among the papers are financial records from the 1977 Five College Women’s Studies Faculty Seminar.

An historian of modern British drama, Joseph Donohue was a longtime member of the Department of English at UMass Amherst. A native of Brookline, Mass., Donohue was educated at Johns Hopkins and Georgetown before receiving his doctorate at Princeton (1965), and he studied directing at both Columbia and Yale. After five years at Princeton, he joined the faculty at UMass in 1971, where he remained for thirty four years. The author of numerous articles and books on the British and Irish theatre, Donohue was author — among many other works — of Dramatic Character in the English Romantic Age (1970) and Theatre in the Age of Kean (1975) and editor of the London Stage, 1800-1900 Project. A past president of the American Society for Theatre Research, he was also a fixture in local performances, including the Valley Light Opera Company. Upon retirement from the department in 2005, Donohue was named Professor Emeritus.

Consisting of hundreds of theatrical programs and other ephemera, the Donohue collection documents a lifetime of avid theater-going. The astonishing array of playwrights and plays represented in the collection, and the diversity of theatres (mostly in New York and London), provides a nearly exhaustively chronicle of Donohue’s theatrical habits from his days as a graduate student to nearly the present.

The economic geographer Julie Graham (1945-2010) and her colleague Katherine Gibson have been influential in envisioning alternatives to capitalist economics and economic development. After studying at Smith College (BA, 1965) and Clark University (PhD, 1984), Graham joined the faculty at UMass Amherst where she helped shape the new graduate program in geography. From early in her career, she worked so closely with her Australian colleague Gibson that they often published jointly under the pen name J.K. Gibson-Graham, and Graham developed close working relationships across several departments at UMass. A prolific author and inspiring mentor for students, Graham’s academic work drew upon an innovative mix of political economy, poststructuralist theory, feminism, and community-based research. Among her more significant publications are the now-classic The End of Capitalism (As We Knew It): A Feminist Critique of Political Economy (1996), on representations of capitalism and their political effect, A Postcapitalist Politics (2006), which explores alternatives to capitalism, and two edited volumes, Class and Its Others (2000) and Re/Presenting Class (2001). Graham died in Nashville on April 4, 2010.

The Graham Papers offer a detailed perspective on the radical geographer Julie Graham. The collections documents Graham’s life and career beginning in her undergraduate years and extending through her last research projects in community economies. Through correspondence and writings, photographs, and research — closely intertwined with her colleague Katherine Gibson — the collection gives shape of Graham’s radical challenge to human geography tinged with an optimistic economic and social possibility. The collection also includes letters, photographs, and genealogical matter relating to Graham’s family, extending back to the time of the First World War.

A particle physicist educated at Johns Hopkins (PhD, 1965), Stanley S. Hertzbach joined the Physics faculty at UMass Amherst in 1965. Over the course of his career, he took part in high-energy experimental work at Brookhaven National Laboratory, the CERN hadron collider, the Cornell electron synchrotron, and beginning in 1979, at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory (Stanford Linear Accelerator Center). With his colleague Richard Koffler, Hertzbach joined the SLD collaboration at SLAC in 1986 studying Z particles, and the BaBar (B Meson) group in 1994. A major contributor to the SLD “beamline group,” Hertzbach took part in the BaBar calorimeter beam test and in testing of its calorimeter modules. He was an active member of the SLD advisory group and chaired the SLAC Users Organization (SLUO) in the 1990s. Hertzbach’s contributions to UMass included service on several committees relating to student achievement, including a stint as Undergraduate Advising Dean of the College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics. Hertzbach retired from UMass in 2009.

The Hertzbach collection consists of two distinct parts: six laboratory notebooks kept while conducting research at SLAC (1987-2002), and approximately 0.5 linear feet of records from university committees on which Hertzbach sat (e.g. the Space and Calendar, 1977-1983).

Beginning with his dissertation in theoretical astrophysics “Local irregularities in a universe satisfying the cosmological principle” (Harvard, 1961), William M. Irvine enjoyed a distinguished career as an astronomer and a role as one of the primary figures in developing astronomy at the Five Colleges. Arriving at UMass in 1966, Irvine helped build the graduate program in astronomy and beginning in 1969, he was a motive force in establishing the Five College Radio Astronomy Observatory. Focussed largely on the chemistry of dense interstellar clouds and the physics and chemistry of comets, and with a broad interest in bioastronomy, Irvine has been a prolific contributor to his field, and has served as Vice President of the Commission on Bio-astronomy at the International Astronomical Union, a member of Federal Union, Chair of the Division for Planetary Sciences at the American Astronomical Society, and he has been named a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

The Irvine Papers offer a thorough record of the establishment of the Five College Radio Astronomy Observatory from 1969 through its dedication in Oct. 1976, along with insights into the growth of astronomy at UMass. Correspondence, memoranda, grant applications, and many dozens of photographs offer insight into the financial and political challenges of building the Observatory in the Quabbin watershed. The collection also includes notes for teaching Astronomy 101 and 223 (planetary science).

Founded in 1964, the Law and Society Association is an interdisciplinary organization bringing together scholars interested in the place of law in social, political, economic and cultural life. Founded by Harry Ball, then based in Madison, Wisc., the association began publishing the Law and Society Review in 1966 and has held its first national meeting in 1975. The executive offices were located at UMass Amherst from 1987 to 2012 under the aegis or Ronald Pipkin of the Program in Legal Studies.

The records of the Law and Society Association include materials relating to former editors of the Law and Society Review, as well as early conferences and summer institutes. Among the notable figures in the field of sociolegal studies represented in the collection are Marc Galanter and Jack Ladinsky.

Joseph S. Marcus

Joseph Sol Marcus arrived at UMass in 1948 as an Instructor in Civil Engineering and graduate student (MS 1954), remaining there for the rest of his career. Born in Oct. 29, 1921, he was educated at Worcester Polytech (BS 1944) and after war-time service with the Navy, he joined the rapidly growing engineering program at UMass. Although chemical engineer, he took responsibility for the fluid mechanics laboratory and taught in civil and mechanical engineering, and after gaining experience through courses from the Atomic Energy Commission and a year spent at Oak Ridge National Laboratories, he introduced nuclear engineering into the curriculum. As he rose through the academic ranks, Marcus became a key figure in university administration, serving as Associate Dean of Engineering, as preceptor for Emily Dickinson House on Orchard Hill, and Special Assistant to the Chancellor for long-range planning, while serving on committees for military affairs, Engineering hopnors, transfers and admissions, discipline, and Continuing Education. Marcus died of cancer on Nov. 1, 1985. Marcus Hall was named in his honor.

The Joseph Marcus Papers document Marcus’s extensive involvement in campus affairs at UMass Amherst, with an emphasis on the period 1965-1975. A small quantity of material relating to his profession activities and academic appointments is joined by well organized files relating to his participation in committees of Engineering honors, Military Affairs (1967-1968), the Orchard Hill residential college and Emily Dickinson House (1964-1969), ROTC and AFROTC curricula, transfers and admissions, the library, Upward Bound, Discipline (1964-1971), and Continuing Education (1970-1977).

Memory Corps was launched in 2011 to collect brief oral histories of the alumni of UMass Amherst. Interviews will include alumni from throughout the history of the university and center on memories of their experiences at UMass and their careers since.